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PRESENTED BY 



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PROCEEDINGS 

AT THE 

OF THE FOUXDIXG 

OF THE 

FREE SCHOOL AT DEDHA.W. 



PROCEEDINGS 



CELEBRATION 



S^tuo ^unlirei) anb /ifttctl) ^.nniucrsaru 



OF THE FOUXDIXG 



f1 



FREE SCHOOL AT DEDHAM, 

MASSACHUSETTS, 
January ii, 1895. 




D E D H A M 
1895- 



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AUG S2 i9tD 



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CONTEXTS 



Extract from the Towx Records v 

Action of the School Committee, .... \di 

E|}e Celebration. 

Exercises ix Memorial Hall, . . . . . 9 

Hymn — Psalm xxxvi. 5-9. Wafts, by Chorus axd Orchestra. 10 

Prayer by Rey. Willia:m H. Fish, Jr., .... 11 

Address of Hox. Frederick D. Ely. Chairmax, . . 11 

Historical Address of Rey. Carlos Slafter, . . 15 
"The Gloria'', Mozart's Twelfth Mass, by Chorus axd 

Orchestra 26 

Address of Hox. Wixslow Warren, 27 

" Governor Greexhalge, 30 

" LIEUTENAXT-GOVERXOR WOLCOTT, . . 34 

Hail Columbia, by Chorus axd Orchestra, • • • 39 

Address of Hox. Fraxk A. Hill, .... 40 

America, by Audience axd Chorus 48 



EXTRACT FROM THE TOWN RECORDS. 



1644 At a meeting the first day of the Eleueiith Month. 



The sd Inhabitants takeing into Consideration the great necesitie 
of prouiding some meanes for the Education of the youth of o'' sd 
Towne did with an Vnaninous consent declare by voate their willing- 
nes to promote that worke promising to put too their hands to provide 
maintenance for a Free Schoole in our said Towne 

And farther did resolue «S: consent testefying it by voate to rayse 
the some of Twenty pounds p annu : towards the maintaining of a 
Schoole m'' to keep a free Schoole in our sd Towne 



ACTION OF THE SCHOOL COMMITTEE. 



A 



T a stated meetino- of the School Committee, on 



'f3 



November 6, 1894, it was voted to celebrate the 
250th Anniversary of the founding of the Free Public 
School in Dedham ; and the following Committee of 
Arrangements was chosen : — 

Hon. Frederick D. Ely, ) 

- For the School Committee. 

Julius H. Tuttle, ) 

Roderick W. Hixe, Superintendent of Schools. 
George F. Joyce, Jr., Principal of the High School. 

On the first day of the eleventh month, 1644 Cjanuary 
I, 1644-5, or January 11, new style), in Town Meeting 
assembled a vote was passed to establish a " Free 
Schoole "; and January 11, 1895, was finally chosen for 
the day of celebration. 

The exercises were to be held in ^lemorial Hall 
the Historical Address to be delivered by Rev. Carlos 
Slafter; and addresses were to be made by the Chairman, 
Hon. Frederick D. Ely, Hon. Winslow Warren, Collec- 
tor of the Port of Boston and a resident of Dedham, His 
Excellency Frederic T. Greenhalge, Governor of the 
Commonwealth, His Honor Roger Wolcott. Lieutenant- 



viii DEDHAK PUBLIC SCHOOLS. 

Governor, and Hon. F'rank A. Hill, Secretary of the 
State Board of Education. The invited guests were to 
be Town Ofificers of Dedham, Officers of Norfolk 
County, Judges and other persons from out of town 
who had a special interest in the celebration, and also 
former members of the School Committee. 

Music appropriate to the occasion was to be 
furnished by a chorus of about 300 pupils, taken from 
the High School and upper grades of the grammar 
schools, under the leadership of Mr. Samuel W. Cole, 
Director of Music in the public schools of the town, 
assisted by Miss Carrie F. Hill and Miss Mary C. 
Hannon of the High School as piano accompanists. 
Miss Alice E. Dean, pianist, and the orchestra of the 
Brookline High School. 

An exhibition of work by pupils of the public 
schools, planned as a part of the celebration and to 
be given at the same time, was postponed on account 
of the shortness of the time in preparation, to be held 
in the High School building, as follows: — 

Classes in Gymnastics, . . Wednesday. March 13. 

Exhibition ok Oral, Written, and Slovd Work. 

Thursday and Friday, March 21 .ind 22. 

Exhibition of Work in Music, . . Friday, March 2'.>. 



EXERCISES IN MEMORIAL HALL. 
January ii, 1S95. 



Soon after the appointed time, quarter past seven 
o'clock, the invited guests met in Lower Memorial 
Hall, and a little later Collector Warren, Governor 
Greenhalge, Lieutenant-Governor Wolcott, and Secre- 
tary Hill arrived. A reception was held for a short 
time, and at a little before a quarter of eight the 
company passed up stairs to Memorial Hall. 

Meanwhile all the seats, excepting those reserved for 
the sfuests, had been taken, and a laro-e crowd was 
waiting outside to gain admission. Many persons 
wxre obliged to forego the pleasure of enjoying the 
addresses and music. Before the distinoruished visitors 
reached the Hall, the Orchestra played the "Salutation 
March ", by Roeder, and then as they appeared the 
audience gave them an enthusiastic reception. 

The Stars and Stripes, simply draped over the 
portrait of Washington, and the graceful arrangement 
of evergreen about the front of the hall, formed a 
beautiful backs^round to the stas^e. 

After quiet had been restored the Chairman rose 
and said : — 



10 DKDIIAM PUBLIC SCHOOLS. 

Ladies and Gentlemen, — Before announcing the first 
number, I desire to call your attention to the meetings, to 
be held on the 13th, 21st, 2 2d, and 29th of March 
as indicated on the fourth page of the programme. The 
first number on the programme is a hymn, chorus by 
the pupils of our public schools. 

I. 

HYMN. 

Psalm xxxvi. o-O, — Wat/s. 
Tune — Russian Hymn. 

High in the Heavens, eternal God, 

Thy goodness in full glory shines ; 
Thy truth shall break through every cloud 

That veils and darkens thy designs. 

Forever firm thy justice stands, 

As mountains their foundations keep ; 

Wise are the wonders of thy hand ; 
Thy judgments are a mighty deep. 

Life, like a fountain, rich and free, 

Springs from the presence of my Lord ; 

And in Thy light our souls shall see 
The glories promised in Thy word. 



. The Chairman, — Ladies and Gentlemen, it was the 
custom within the days of my own memory, for the citi- 
zens in the country towns of Massachusetts to open town 
meetings with prayer. In accordance with that custom, — 
and no doubt our fathers two hundred and fifty years 
ago sought Divine guidance and direction in the 
meetings of that day, — I now ask you to join with the 
Rev. William H. Fish, Jr., in invoking the Divine 
blessino'. 



250 TH AXNIVERSABY. 11 

II. 
PRAYER. 

Rev. William H. Fish, Je. 

O Thou, who hast been our dwelling place iu all genera- 
tions, as we meet to commemorate the labors, the sacrifices, the 
wise counsels of those who established our schools, we would 
remember that Thou art the true and ultimate source of all our 
blessings : that our fathers sought Thine inspiration and trusted 
in Thy guidance, and that to Thee, first of all, our gratitude 
and praise are due. May grateful feelings animate our hearts 
this evening, and may the exercises in which we here engage 
help to deepen our sense of responsibility to Thee for the right 
use and further improvement of those institutions, our precious 
heritage from the past, on which our liberties and our future 
welfare as a people so largely depend. Amen. 



III. 

ADDRESS. 
Hox. Frederick D. Ely, 

CHAIK3IAX OF THE SCHOOL C0M3nTTEE. 

Ladies axd Gextlemex, — It is my first duty as presiding 
officer of this meeting, and I am sure it is the first impulse of 
my heart, to extend in the name of all the citizens of our town, 
and especially in the name of the children of the public schools, 
to our neighbor, Mr. Warren, the representative of the National 
Government, to His Excellency the Governor of this Common- 
wealth, to His Honor the Lieutenant-Governor, and to the hon- 
orable and respected Secretary of the State Board of Education, 
a hearty and royal welcome and greeting [applause]. We 



12 DEDHAM PUBLIC SCHOOLS. 

appreciate tlie honor of their presence on tliis occasion. "We 
shall treasure the words of wisdom and good cheer which ihey 
will speak to us. 

I have much, my friends, in my heart that 1 wish to say to 
you on this occasion, not only concerning the schools of two 
hundred and fifty years ago, but concerning the schools of to-day 
in the town of Dedham ; but I know how anxious we all are to 
listen to those wlio will follow me, and my words shall be brief. 

We are met here to commemorate a great event. Two 
hundred and fifty years ago this very day, the inhabitants of 
this town by vote in town meeting assembled established a free 
public school and made an appropriation for its support. The 
proprieties of this occasion forbid the contention that this was 
the first school of the kind in ^Massachusetts. But, if our 
ancestors were not the first in the breach, they were " not 
slack at least to follow those who might be so." 

But whereon the site of the first free public school supported 
by general taxation may have been, or whatever obscurity may 
surround that question, it is clear that, in the cause of educa- 
tion, the towns were in advance of the State. The establish- 
ment of free public schools by the towns did not follow but 
preceded and led to the celebrated Colonial Act of 1647. This 
law, passed three years after free schools were established in 
DedJKim, made education in Massachusetts universal and free. 
For the first time in the history of the world, the people were 
compelled bylaw to maintain schools for the education of all the 
children. Massachusetts, therefore, has the majestic distinction 
of originating the free public school. 

It was, indeed a great event. Referring to this law and the 
institution of Harvard College, the great historian, George 
Bancroft, says: — 

In these measures, especially in ihe laws establishing common 
schools, lies the secret of the success and character of New England. 
Every child, as it was born into the world, was lifted from the earth 
by the genius of the country, and in the statutes of the land, received, 
as its birth-right, a pledge of the public care for its morals and its 
mind. 



250TH ANNIVEBSABY. 13 

But these benefits have not been confined to Xew England^ 
Oat of the little clearings of Eastern Massachusetts this system 
of free schools has spread over the broad domain of the Ameri- 
can Union. According to the latest statistics, 13,484,572 pupils 
are enrolled in the public schools, and the total expenditures of 
these schools amount to §163,568,444. annually. 

The joyous shouts of the children of the common schools, 
ringing over the hills and through the valleys of the land, span 
the continent from ocean to ocean, and proclaim to the world 
the assured perpetuity of the Republic. New states vie with 
the old and those most recently admitted to the Union hold no 
second place in the excellence of their public schools. At the 
recent Columbian Exposition, I was struck with wonder at the 
quality of the school work exhibited by the distant State of 
Washington. It would have done no discredit to the best 
schools of the city of Boston. These schools thickly dotting 
the entire countrj^ and affording educational facilities for a 
population of 70,000,000, retain the same fundamental character 
and purpose, are controlled by the same authority and are 
supported in the same manner of the little school established in 
this town 250 years ago today. The methods of teaching have 
improved. The instrumentalities of discipline are not what 
they once were. The branches taught have wonderfulh^ in- 
creased in number. But the essential qualities of the school 
remain the same. 

The distinguishing feature of these schools is that they are 
controlled by the people and supported by general taxation. 
This brings them into harmony with our American form of 
government. They are Democratic. They are Republican. In 
them the pupils breathe the pure, cheering air of the Declaration 
of Independence. " All men are created equal " floats gently 
through every schoolroom like the sweet refrain of some angelic 
song. A chikl attends such a school not by privilege or by 
favur, but by right. He is there by the right of American 
citizenshi[), the strongest and proudest^ title_on the face of the 



14 DEDHAM PUBLIC SCHOOLS. 

earth. Above him is the flag of his country. Around him is 
the protecting arm of the constitution. He ma}' be poor, his 
jacket may be coarse, his shoes maybe broken, but in the public 
school he has no superior, though his neighbor may be arrayed 
like Solomon in all his glory. 

Herein lies the grandeur, the dignity, the power and the 
beneficence of our common schools. Herein lies their superiority 
to all private schools, however richly such schools may be 
endowed, or however learnedly they may be conducted. Today 
these free schools are a blessing beyond price to all the people, 
and a tower of strength beyond estimation to our American 
representative government. 

The riches of the commonwealth. 

Are free, strong minds, and hearts of health ; 

And more to her than gold or grain. 

The cunning hand and cultured brain. 

For well she keeps her ancient stock, 
The stubborn strength of Pilgrim Rock ; 
And still maintains, with milder laws. 
And clearer light, the Good Old Cause ! 

Nor heeds the sceptic's puny hands, 

While near her school the church-spire stands ; 

Nor fears the blinded bigot's rule, 

While near her church-spire stands the school. 



QoOTH ASXIVEESAIiY. 15 

The Cbiairman, — Ladies and Gentlemen ; our High 
School was established in 185 1. The first teacher was 
our respected fellow citizen, Mr. Charles J. Capen ; but 
at the end of a year he was called to a more responsible 
post in the Boston Latin School, where he has been to 
the present time, respected and honored and revered by 
thousands of men who are now leaders of society and in 
business in Massachusetts. His successor. ]\Ir. Slafter, 
took up the work in our High School and carried it on 
with remarkable success for a period of forty years. To 
him has been assigned the duty to-night of making the 
historical address, and I am sure it could not fall into 
hands more worthy of it. I now have the pleasure of 
introducins: to vou the Rev. Carlos Slafter. 



IV. 

ADDRESS. 
By the Rev. Carlos Slafteu. 

The observance of an anniversary is a pleasant, and 
sonietimes a most profitable, way of expressing our interest 
in past events : and, as the centuries roll on, we learn what 
events are sufficiently important, or have so promoted human 
welfare, as to call for such recognition. That we have good 
reason for celebrating to-day the anniversary of a Dedham Town 
Meeting, will. Ave trust, become apparent as we examine the 
work which was there accomplished. 

On the first day of January, the eleventh month of the year 
1644, as time was then reckoned, two hundred and fifty years 
ago to-day, the freemen of Dedham assembled in their small. 



16 DEDHAM PUBLIC SCHOOLS. 

half-finislied, liay-tliatched meetinghouse. It was the (hiy for 
choosing their town officers, viz., a man to keep the Town 
Book and also to act as one of the Seven men ; Six others to 
make up the Seven who had general charge of the town busi- 
ness and were afterwards very ai>propriately called Select Men : 
three Surveyors who had the care of the roads ; and two 
Woodreeves, to look after the fences, the forests, and the fire- 
ladders, by means of which the householders were obliged to 
furnish ready access to the roofs of their thatched dwellings. 

But before they elected these officers, they transacted the 
business which makes this town meeting the most remarkable in 
the annals of Dedham. Though man}' of you here present may 
be familiar with the story of this meeting as it appears in the 
third volume of the printed records of the town, yet it seems 
fitting on this occasion to refresh our memory of the facts as they 
were recorded by the hand of Michael Powell who was chosen 
that day to keep the Town Book. 

The record opens as follows: "1(344. At a meeting the first 
day of the Eleventh month. Assembled those whose names are 
under written with other the Inhabitants of this Town." 

We ma^ remark here that it was a custom, which had been 
generally observed up to the time of this meeting, but which 
was not continued much later, to record the names of the free- 
men who were present at the general meetings of the town. A 
roll of those entitled to vote in town affairs, and whose duty it 
Was to be present, was called over before they proceeded to 
business, and fines were imposed on those who were absent or 
tard}'. On one occasion, seven years later, Sergt. Daniel Fisher 
was '• deputed to call the Rolle of the Townsmen " to the num- 
ber of eighty-four. There are only half as many recorded as 
present at this meeting ; and as you listen to the reading of the 
record, if you are of the old Dedham stock, you will no doubt 
recognize the names of some of your ancestors. Not one of 
thein has a middle name, as you will see ; nor have they an}- 
fine titles to distinguish them : but still you will have no occa- 
sion to be ashamed of them ; for we shall find that thev were all 



260TR ASyiYER^ARY. 17 

of one mind in the truly creditable business tlieythen and there 
transacted. The fortj'-two names are as follows : — 

M"^ Jn"^ Allin past"^ Jn'' Huntinge, Eld"^: Hen: Chickering The 
Wight Jn*^ Thu[rston] Anthony Fisher Jos Fisher Dan: Fisher Jn*^ 
Luson: M"" Ralph Wheeloc[k] 'jn° Gaye: Willm Bullard Jn^ Bullard 
Robt Crosman Hen Wilson Jn*^ N[ewton] Edw: Coluer Hen Smith: 
Nath Colborne: Xath Aldus Hen Phillip[s] Sam^i Morse: Dan Morse 
Jn° Morse: Jos Kingsbury Jn° Dwite Lamb: G[enere] Edw Kemp: 
Edw Richards Tho Leader Geo Bearstowe: Jonath Fairba[nks] Mich 
Powell Mich Metcalfe: Juno' Jn'^ Metcalfe Jn'^ Frary: EH: Lusher: 
R[obert] Hinsdell: Pet Woodward: Jn'^ Guyle Rich Euered Robt 
Gowinge &"^: 

From these forty-two men a host of able men have descended. 
We at once call to mind five college presidents ; the two 
Dwights of Yale, the two Wheelocks of Dartmouth, and Everett 
of Harvard : three governors of states : Everett of Massachu- 
setts, and the two Fairbaukses of Vermont. Fisher Ames, Ded- 
ham's most distinguished son, was a descendant of the Anthony 
Fisher of our list. How many other men of w^orth and renown 
sprang from this ancestry, we should doubtless be surprised to 
learn. 

The record jJi'oceeds in the following terras : — 

The sd Inhabitants takeing into Consideration the great necesi- 
tie of prouiding some meanes for the Education of the youth in o' 
sd Towne did with an Vnanimous consent declare by voate their 
wiUingnes to promote that worke promising to put too their hands to 
prouide maintenance for a Free Schoole in our said Towne 

This sentence is an admirable and complete expression of the 
motive and spirit which characterized this meeting. There was 
no word of dissent from the noble purpose they had in mind. 
They were all determined to support the School which they 
were about to establish. They had evidently weighed the sub- 
ject and were ready to assume as citizens the responsibility of 
educating the children of the Town. This conclusion being 



18 DEDHAM PUBLIC SCHOOLS. 

deliberately and clearly announced in tlie foregoing j)reainl)le, 
the more explicit provision fur the free school is expressed in the 
following words : — 

And farther did resolue & consent testefying it by voate to rayse 
the some of Twenty pounds p annu: towards the maintaining of a 
Schoole m"^ to keep a free Schoole in our sd Towne 

This was a vote to raise money, and it means to raise it by 
taxation ; and as the vote is to raise twenty pounds per annum^ 
the action of the town was plainly intended to be continuous. 
Subsequent acts of the town show clearly that this was a provi- 
sion for seven years. 

That this sum of twenty pounds was to be raised by a general 
tax is distinctly implied in the next clause of the record which 
is as follows : — 

And also did resolue &: consent to betrust the sd '20£ p annu : & 
certaine lands in o'' Towne formerly set a part for publique vse: into 
the hand of Feofees to be presently Chosen by themselues to imploy 
the sd 20^ and the land aforesd to be improued for the vse of the 
said Schoole: that as the profits shall arise from y*" sd land euery 
man may be proportionably abated of his some of the sd 20;^ afore- 
said freely to be giuen to y^ vse aforesaid And y^ y^ said Feofees 
shall haue power to make a Rate for the nesesary charg of improuing 
the sd land: they giueing account thereof to the Towne or to those 
whome they should depute 

John Hunting Eld"^ Eliazer Lusher Francis C'hickeringe John 
Dwight & Michael Powell are Chosen Feofees and betrusted in 
the behalfe of the Schoole as aforesaid 

Here we see a provision is made for abating proportionably 
every man's sum of the twenty pounds per annum, whenever 
the land should yield a sufiicient profit. This means simply an 
abatement of Taxes in a certain contingency. The land, forty 
acres of unimproved or wild land, had been ''set apart for pub- 
lique use" two years before : but there is no indication that it 
ever brought much income to the school. It may liave paid some 



250th annivebsabt. 19 

incidental charges ; but probably it never caused any abate- 
ment of taxes. 

Thus we see how in that Town Meeting held 250 years ago 
to-day, the freemen of Dedham established a free public school 
supported by general taxation. It was put into the hands of 
feoffees, five of the best men of the town, and they managed it 
for the next seven years without any interference by others. 

We have good grounds for believing that it was immediately 
organized by the feoffees. There are in the town records occa- 
sional references to the school, just enough to indicate that it 
was performing quietly its appropriate functions. Before refer- 
ring to these more particularly, allow me to say that through the 
kindness of Mr. Fisher Howe, Jr., of Chestnut Hill, there has been 
placed in our hands a copy of the nuncupative will of Hemy 
Deengaine, a physician and one of the early proprietors of Ded- 
ham. He died in Roxbury on the 8th of December, 1645. On 
that day he made this will in the presence of the Rev. John Eliot, 
the well-known Apostle to the Indians. It is in the handwriting, 
and bears the signature, of Mr. Eliot as witness ; and also that of 
Gov. John Winthrop, before whom it was testified to by the said 
witness. In this will there is this clause : "He gave the school 
in Dedham 3£ to be paide out of his house & lands there." 

This is the only gift known to have been made to the Dedliam 
school before Dr. William Avery's donation of £60 in 1680. 
There is no record showing that the Deengaine legacy was paid 
over to the school; but the will is satisfactory evidence that 
there was a school in Dedham in 1645. 

Coming back to the Town Records we find that in February, 
1644, the seven men put a portion of the Training ground into 
the hands of the "Feofees for y^ free Schoole in Dedham" for the 
use of the school "from this present day unto the last day of 
the Eight month which shalbe in y^ yeare 1650." This was a 
six years use of the land and plainly implies that the school had 
already begun its work. In 1648 a school house was resolved to 
be built; it was planned by the Select men ; was erected in the 



20 DEDIIAM rUBLJC SCHOOLS. 

Spring of 1649 ; and tlie builder, John Thurston, was paid by a 
Rate eleven pounds and three pence. A feoffee for the school was 
chosen in 1648 soon after, and because of, the removal of Michael 
Powell to Boston, where he was one of the founders, and after- 
wards the ruling elder, of the Second Church. Also at different 
times the school house was repaired or improved at the expense 
of the Town. 

But in 1651, at the expiration of the seven years, the select- 
men in the records speak of "the time of the Covenant in y® 
Schoole keeping" as "being expired.'' With whom had this 
Covenant in the school-keeping been made, is a question no one 
has yet been able to answer. The records of the feoffees, which 
in view of the character of the men must have been carefully 
kept, have unfortunately been lost ; but there was a covenant 
with some one who kept the school, and we deem it proper to 
say that tradition and reasonable conjecture both point to Mr. 
Ralph Wheelock as that master. He was resident in Dedham 
all those seven years, but was seldom engaged in other town 
business during that time as he had often been in previous years. 
At the time when the selectmen were considering the ])lan of a 
schoolhouse, there is this brief, but suggestive, record under date 
of Dec. 12, 1648: "Mr. Wheelock's motion for advice an- 
swered." Is it not possible, and even probable, that the school 
master wished to be advised as to the school-house they were in- 
tending to build ? It is not unreasonable, to say the least. 

. In 1652 Mr. Wheelock became a resident of the new town 
of Medfield ; and in 1655 was teacliing the first school of that 
town. 

In what house or building the first years of the Dedham 
school were spent is not a matter of record. There is very good 
reason for supposing that, as in some other towns, the primitive 
meeting house served as the first school-house. All public meet- 
ings were held there, and except in the coldest winter weather 
it would be as comfortable for a school as for public worsliip. 
Perhaps in some of the severest days Mr. Wheelock might 
"forego the school," or entertain it at his own house, as Michael 



260TH AyyiYEliSABY. 21 

Metcalf sometimes did. In those old times school children did 
not expect as many comforts as the present generation require. 
Their own homes we should think intolerable : and of their 
school and meeting-houses, I do not dare to say what we should 
think. On the score of comfort it would be hardly safe to specu- 
late as to the accommodations required by the seho(jl-boys of 
1645. 

The first school-house erected in Dedham stood near the 
meeting-house, on ground now occupied by the Unitarian vestry. 
Two, and probably three, successors held the same position, so as 
to be often designated in the records as "the school near the 
meeting-house." 

But in 1651, the covenant in the school-keeping having ex- 
pired at the end of seven years, the school again became the sub- 
ject of Town action. The freemen assembled in the little meet- 
ing-house on the first day of January. Sergt. Daniel Fisher 
called the roll of eighty-four freemen, and their third vote is thn.s 
recorded : — 

It is resolued that a Schoole for y^ education of youth in our 
Towne shall be continued & mayntayned for the whole tearme of 
Seauen yeares next, and that the settled mayntenance or wages of 
the School m'' shall be '2^)£ p ann at y^ leaste 

A Towne stocke shall be ra3'sed. to y® sume of 2^£. at y^ least 

So we see that the school is to be continued ; and nothing less 
than twenty pounds must be raised and ofi'ered as pay to the school- 
master. How much more he might be paid, the town did not 
seem to care. That was left to the judgment of those intrusted 
with the management of the school. The Town was solicitous 
chiefly that too little should not be invested in their thus far suc- 
cessful adventure. 

To rightly appreciate the action of the Town during these 
years, we must bear in mind that it was entering upon a new 
method of supporting schools. When the inhabitants of Ded- 
ham, in January, 1641, marked out so definitely this scheme of 
supporting a school by general taxation, it seemed to be 
their own original plan, dictated in a great measure by ne- 



22 DEBIT AM Pl'BLir SCHOOLS. 

cessity, that mother of useful iuveutions. Everytliing^in^Dedham, 
except giving away land had to be done by Kates ; and it was 
perfectly natural that taxation was the foundation on which they 
began to build their school system. It was clearly the controlling 
idea of those who shaped the action of that meeting ; and it 
received the earnest approval and support of all who were 
present. And in 1G51 this system was by vote continued for 
another seven years. 

And so, to-day, we commemorate the beginning of Dediiain's 
free public school, which has suffered no lapse from that time 
to the present. 

There is one matter relating to a change in the manner of 
raising the schoolmaster's salary which, as it has sometimes 
been misunderstood, we do not feel at liberty to omit. In 1651 
some of the rate-payers evidently felt that they, whose children 
or wards received all the direct benefits of the school, ought to 
contribute a larger share to the expense of its support. This 
subject was considered by the select men into whose hands the 
care of the school had come by a vote of the town ; and also 
a committee had been appointed " to ripen the case " and pro- 
pose their thoughts to the town. The result was that on the 
17th of May 1G52, the select men made this record of their 
conclusions : — 

Concerning the Schoole. these ppositions ar to be tendered to the 
consideration of the Towne for the mayntayning therof for 7 years 

1 that all such Inhabitants in our Towne as haue Male childeren 
or servants in thier families betwixt the age of 4 and 14 yeares. shall 
paye for each such to the Schoolem"". for the time being or to his vse 
at his assignment in Towne in Currant payement the sufne of 5* 
yearely pvided that such children be then liueing and ahideing in our 
Towne 

2 And w' soeuer these suiTie fall short of the suiTiesof Twentic;^ 
shall be raised by waye of Rateing vpon estates, according to the 
vsuall manner 

This Wii« not a charge for tuition, but a direct tax on all 
male children of a certain age whether they attended school 



250 TH AX^'IYEJRSABY. 23 

or not. There is no record of the town's accepting this Rule of 
levying a tax on boys : yet she probably did so, and with reason ; 
for her boys were some of her most valuable assets, and, by giv- 
ing them an education, she proposed to make them still more 
valuable. 

But supposing there were twenty of these boys, — this is cer- 
tainly a generous estimate, — five pounds would be raised by this 
juvenile poll tax, and fifteen pounds would be levied on estates, 
" according to the usual manner." But in 1653, about a year 
after the rule was proposed, a School Rate was put on record in 
which over seventy persons were taxed in sums varying from 
twenty-one shillings seven pence to two pence ha-penny : and as 
the sura total of the rate fell short of what was due the school 
master by a little over nineteen shillings, the deficit was taken 
from the " overplusse " of the country Rate ; so that the whole 
salary of that year appears to have been paid by general taxation. 

But the records, — and we must accept them as true, — show 
that for many years, in fact till near the close of the seventeenth 
century, the school rate was very often a mixed one ; consisting 
of a poll tax of from three and a half to five shillings on the boys 
of the town, amounting to a quarter or a half of the teacher's 
pay, leaving the rest of the school expenses to be met by a tax 
on estates. The records, liowever, leave us no chance to doubt 
that since January 1, 1644, old style, not a year has passed in 
which the citizens of Dedham have not taxed their estates for 
the support of free public schools, one or more. 

I venture to say here that the action of the Town of Ded- 
ham in 1644 had no small influence on the school legislation of 
the Massachusetts Colony. Within three years after Dedham's 
decisive action, the General Court made the free public school a 
part of her political system. Now it is an interesting fact that 
Eleazer Lusher, one of the original board of feoffees of the Ded- 
ham school and probably the chief projector of the same, was a 
deputy, or representative, from this town to the Geneiul Court 
almost continuously, that is sixteen years, from 1640 to 1662, 
Michael Powell and Francis Ciiickering, two other feoffees, were 



24 DEDllAM ITJiLIC SCHOOLS. 

also several times inenibeis of tl)at lioiiorable body. Who could 
give better advice on the subject of popular education than these 
men who were at the time administering the Dedham plan of a 
free public school? Who would be more zealous and hopeful 
than they who were witnesses to the success of an experiment 
conducted under their own hands? Public opinion, enligiitened 
b}' this clear demonstration of what is possible in an intelligent 
community, soon shaped itself into wise legislation. It is not 
improbable that these Dedham delegates were at first regarded 
as extremists in the matter of schools — educational cranks 
in the parlance of the present day: they were, indeed, in advance 
of most, if not all, of their neighbors in solving the problem of 
free public school education ; and for that reason we would do 
them appropriate honors to-day. 

And while we contemplate the growth of the institution 
which they planted by their hard earned means, and nourished 
by their personal care and exertions, we are excited to still 
greater admiration of their enterprise, wisdom and forethought. 
It would be useless to attempt here an account of the growth of 
this institution in Dedham, keeping pace, as it did, with the 
increase of the population and the advance of educational ideas, 
— at first, one little school under the care of Ralph Whcelock, 
])robably, and in the primitive thatched meeting house ; a few 
years later, a somewhat larger number gathered in the new 
schoolhouse which was combined with a watch-house leaning 
against its chimney, and having " an aspect 4 several ways " ; 
later still, after King Philip's war, and his tragic abdication, 
when the town expanded freely and rapidly without fear of 
savage foes, a period of migratory school-teaching, dividing 
the master's year among three precincts or parishes : aifter 
that, several schools in four or more sections of the i)road 
township; still later, masters' schools in the winter, and mis- 
tresses' schools in the summer in the various neighborhoods as con- 
venience or necessity determined ; then again, the regular school 
districts defined by statute, those pure and enter[)rising democ- 
racies, each desiring to excel the others ; after that, the 



250TH ANNIVERSABY. 25 

combination of a district and a town system, managed, some- 
times harmoniously and sometimes not, by prudential and Town 
Committees ; then, in response to an upward pressure in the 
district schools, the High School was added to the system in 
sj)ite of much criticism and fierce opposition ; a little later the 
total abolition of the School Districts, giving the whole system 
into the hands of the presumptively unerring Town Committee ; 
and finally the appointment of a general superintendent to have 
exj)ert supervision of all the educational interests of the town. 

But you see that the subject is too large, spreading into too 
many branches, to be discussed on this occasion. We are assem- 
bled here this evening, chiefly, to commemorate the initiation of 
a free school established, controlled, and supported by the free- 
men of this town. We come here in fact to honor a band of 
pioneers in educational progress, who in 1644 made a bold and 
successful adventure. Hereafter, therefore, let the names of 
Lusher, Hunting, Powell, Chickering and Dwight be associated 
and identified with the part which Dedham acted in developing 
practically the idea of a free piiblic school suj^ported b}^ general 
taxation. The ancient records of the town, carefully com- 
posed, neatly transcribed, faithfully preserved, and now being 
gradually put into print by a competent and painstaking 
editor, will constitute a permanent memorial and proof of what 
those earnest men designed, and of what they accomplished. 
And as we all now have easy access to these records, so no one 
of us will be excusable if we remain ignorant of tlieir truth and 
their significance. 

It is indeed fortunate for the members of that little assembly 
of 1644, fortunate also for us who would pay them deserved 
honors, that a faithful and veracious scribe not only made a 
clear and adequate record of the work Mdiich they executed, 
but he has also preserved for us their individual names ; and 
in his honest zeal for learning has most fittingly'- portrayed the 
generous spirit b}' which tliey were actuated. We certainly 
make no mistake in celebrating the anniversary of their mem- 
orable achievement, and tlius empliasizing our united praise of 
their far-reaching wisdom. 



26 DEDHAM PUBLIC SCHOOLS. 

The Chairman, — It becomes my pleasant duty, at 
this point in the programme, in behalf of the people 
of this town, to thank the members of the orchestra 
of the Brookline High School for their presence here 
this evening, which adds so much to the attractiveness 
of these exercises. 



V. 

THE GLORIA. 

Mozart's Twelfth Mass, 

By Chorus and Ohciiestka. 



The Chairman, — Some time ago President Cleveland 
selected one of our townsmen as Collector of the Port of 
Boston. It gave me very sincere pleasure, not only be- 
cause it was conferring a high honor upon a neighbor 
and friend, but because I knew that the office would be 
conducted in an honest, and upright and independent 
manner; and I know that the citizens of Boston felt as 
I did. It gives me a very great pleasure to have an 
opportunity of introducing Mr. Warren to you, his 
neighbors and friends, this evening, in the position 
which he holds as the representative of the President of 
the United States on this occasion. I have the pleasure 
and the honor of introducing to you the Honorable 
WiNSLOW^ Warren, Collector of the Port of Boston. 



250 TH AXXIVEBSABY. '21 

VI. 
ADDRESS. 
Hon. Wixslow Warren. 

Ladies and Gentlemen, Neighbors and Friends : — 
Eight years ago we celebrated the 250th anniversary of the 
incorporation of the town of Dedham. Tonight we are met 
together to commemorate the 250th anniversary of the found- 
ing of the first free school within our limits. Which is the greater 
event of the two ? The creation of a municipal body w'as, of 
course, the precursor of subsequent action, but nevertheless one 
was but a political fact, while the other was the recognition of 
intellectual needs. The first was a combination for mutual safety 
and order, the latter was laying deep the foundation of the 
future. 

Think of the foresight and unselfish devotion which led those 
plain farmers, struggling for a scanty subsistence in a wilderness, 
poor and alone, to deliberately and unanimously vote that they 
would put their hands into their almost empty pockets and tax 
themselves on account of " the great necessitie of providing 
some means for the education of the youth of our said towne." 
It is difficult now to realize the sacrifice they made for coming 
generations, and it is all the more impressive from the fact that 
it was not a sporadic movement of Dedham only, but a move- 
ment common to so many communities in our neighborhood. 

Eight years before, Harvard College had been founded at 
Newtowne, now Cambridge, differing little from a free school, and 
at about the same time, Boston and Dorchester, Plymouth and 
perhaps other towns, in one shape or another, provided that 
their children should be taught at the public expense those 
principles which lie at the bottom of free government and those 
rudiments of learning necessary for tlie well-being of a growing 
State. 



•28 DEDIIAM J'UBLIC SCHOOLS. 

It was a grand exhibition oi the Angh»-Saxon sense and 
forethought wliicli have made our country what it is today. 
Hand in hand, in town, village and handet, went tlie church and 
the common school, and never was the poverty of those men so 
great nor their hardships so severe that they could forget that the 
problems of the future were to be measured by the intelligence 
of the masses of the people. They trusted the people because 
they intended, so far as in them lay, that their descendants 
should be educated to meet all questions which might arise with 
the intelligence born of the training of the common school. 

Time has not changed the situation ; the people's education 
now', as ever, is the only sure reliance for the permanency of our 
institutions, and no amount of material prosperity, no rolling up 
of millions of wealth, no outward exhibition of numbers or 
strength, will avail, unless the future is based upon this same 
education of the people and on something better than temporary 
success or riches. 

Without this sure foundation republican institutions will 
prove a failure, and I believe in no other manner can the vast 
influx of foreign material poured upon our shores be moulded 
into true American citizens. Our fathers were firm in the faith 
that education was the guardian of liberty, and their meaning 
was not the education of the favored few, but the common in- 
struction of the masses of the people. 

The average education and intelligence of the people will be 
the average of administrative and political ideas ; the stream of 
constitutional government will never rise higher than its source, 
and universal suffrage itself must be tested by the knowledge 
and wisdom and sense of the masses, who, for good or ill, will 
wield the ballot. Where else are we to find the answer to the 
great economic and financial questions of the day ? How tdse 
are we to settle the perplexing questions as to the relations of 
labor and capital ? How are we to secure honest administra- 
tion, not only of our towns and cities, but of the great and 
overpowering private trusts and corp(.>rations, — unless the ulti- 
mate resort is to the intelligence of the people ? 



250 TH A^^NIVERSARY. 29 

The flag which proudly floats over your school-houses will be 
but an empty symbol unless those schools from year to year 
shall send forth men and women trained in the principles 
which stand for high citizenship, and equipped for a sturdy con- 
test with false ideas and theories of government. Republican 
freemen can be born only of republican ideas, and it is for the 
common schools to implant these ideas. It is not the wide 
range of studies that will save us ; it is the thoroughness with 
which our youth are taught those great basic principles, that 
honesty is not only the best policy, but the highest duty of every 
true man ; that ignorance is un-American, and that sturdy in- 
dependence of thought and action is the inherited treasure of 
American freemen. 

This meeting, too, is a noticeable recognition of intellect 
rather than physical force. A word to our schools upon that 
point. They are, and ever will be, first and foremost, for the 
training of the intellectual man, — all else must be subordinate : 
and though I would be the last to deprecate such physical train- 
ing as is necessary for the sound well-being of the body, the 
sports and games proper and desirable for growing youth should 
never be allowed to absorb the time and thoughts of the pupils 
to the detriment of the sound mental athletics the}^ can acquire 
nowhere else so well as at the schools. Therefore, my friends, 
I believe in the common free schools. I believe in them because 
they are American, because they are democratic, and because 
the active contact there with just the forces and just the kinds 
of mind and thought to be met with in after life, will best fit 
their graduates to grapple with American ideas. Self-confidence 
and rugged honesty are best engendered by early struggle and 
early impression, and if our schools are what they ought to be 
they should turn out the best type of the American citizen. 

I am glad, then, to join in marking this great event in our 
local history. My best wishes for our people can only be that 
the wisdom of the fathers may descend to the sons, and that 
they may never forget what was sacrificed for their welfare, and 
be ready in turn to sacrifice without stint for those coming 



30 DEDUAM PUBLIC SCHOOLS. 

generations who will take up their work ami carry, we hope, to 
a more complete fruition, the great experiment of a free govern- 
ment by a free people. 



The Chairman, — Ladies and Gentlemen, Massachu- 
setts has been fortunate in the character of her Gov- 
ernors. They have been without exception, honest, able 
and patriotic. But I thought this afternoon as I was 
forecasting this celebration, how particularly fortunate 
Dedham had been in the men who had occupied the 
gubernatorial chair at the times when her great anni- 
versaries had occurred. In 1836, when she celebrated 
the two hundredth anniversary of the incorporation of 
the town, the Hon. Edward Everett was Governor. In 
1886, when we celebrated the two hundred and fiftieth 
anniversary of the same event, the Hon. George D. 
Robinson was Governor of Massachusetts. To-night, 
we are equally fortunate in the presence here of the 
Hon. Frederic T. Greenhalge. 

[At this point the applause was so great and continuous that the 
Chairman was unable to proceed, and Governor Greenhalge rose to 
address the audience without further introduction.] 



VII. 

ADDRESS. 

His Excellency, Frederic T. Greenhalge, 

GOVERNOn OK THK CoMMOX WK.M.TII. 

Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen :— I was told 
that I should find a cold audience in Dedham [laughter]. That 
certainly seems to have been a gross misrepresentation and I 
shall contradict it at the first opportunity [applause]. 



250th anniversary. 31 

I congratulate the people of Declham on this significant and 
impressive commemoration. It happens to be the first visit I 
have ever made, officially or unofficially, to your honored and 
ancient town, and I congratulate myself that I am permitted to 
come as the representative of the Commonwealth to bring its 
sympathy and warm approbation of an occasion like this. I 
might have come here on a different mission ; I might have 
been unfortunate enough to come on a political errand 
[laughter] when I should have had to pay my respects to 
my friend, the Collector, and then say the only good thing his 
President had done was to appoint him Collector [applause and 
laughter]. But, fortimately I have not been required to say 
anything of that sort, except the first part, which I most cheer- 
fully do express myself with all the warmth of approbation and 
sincerity. I believe in this Collector of yours and this Collector 
of ours, for he does not spare us in the exercise of his official 
duties ; and I may say that I take a double pleasure in coming 
here on what may be called an educational occasion. It is 
something more than political, as the Collector has well said. 
We are not here, my friends, — either the Lieutenant-Governor 
or myself, — we are not here to decide any conflicting claims 
to-day as to where the first free public school was instituted. 
You will remember the seven cities claim the honor of the birth 
of Homer. Shall I be deemed irreverent or iconoclastic if I 
say that half a dozen cities and towns might well contend for 
this honor of instituting the first free public school in America. 

As we stand here and think of 1645 and 1895 we can say, as 
it were, two centuries and a half have rolled away aU their 
shadows, and the centuries meet, the nineteenth now rapidly 
approaching its completion, and the seventeenth, — and the nine- 
teenth in its pride and self-satisfaction may well learn something 
of the seventeenth centu^3^ "VVe boast of our triumphs, and the 
nineteenth century stands diademed with its achievements, which 
have taught us to "rift the hills and roll the waters, flash the 
lightnings, weigh the sun." Yet as we look back and see that 
picture of ''plain living and high thinking" shown by the men 



32 DEDHAM PUBLIC SCHOOLS. 

whose noble record has been presented here before you to-night, 
we can see that the great manl}'' virtues, tlie strong, mighty 
spirit of the race, the love of liberty and the love of light, 
burned as strong then as they do to-day ; and we see Endicott 
and Wintlirop, Dudley and Vane ; we see the old Governors 
whose names will forever have a place in the history of Massa- 
chusetts ; we see them sitting together and taking counsel for 
the best interests of the Commonwealth. And, n)y friends, we 
find that they did, almost as soon as they could draw their breath 
in peace, determine that education was the foundation stone of 
the Commonwealth which they had reared. And so they set to 
work on that principle ; and as Mr. Slaf ter has read to you, the 
scheme propounded in that vote two centuries and a half ago 
contains a lesson full of meaning, of strength and of inspiration. 
A "free school supported by general taxation" means a great 
deal. The rich man, out of his bounty, may give a million here 
and a million there ; yet it ought not to mean as much to 
the community or to the Republic as the Twenty Pounds voted 
by these freemen of Dedham two hundred and fifty years ago. 
Great movements, as your Chairman, as the historian, as the 
Collector have stated, must come from the people, and must 
carry the people along. If I may use the name of a man eminent 
in politics I ma}' say that Thomas B. Reed has a somewhat strik- 
ing fancy, as it might be termed, in regard to great movements 
of the people. He decries and possibly underrates the power 
and influence of so-called leaders. He considers that the men 
who are said to be promoters of the public good, inventors of 
great ideas, leaders and captains, are simply but the voices of 
the conscience, of the heart, of the judgment, the ideas and the 
purposes of the people ; and if a leader of thoughts goes so far 
beyond the people that his language becomes unintelligible or 
inaudible, that it cannot be heard or understood, then he is one 
of those unfortunates of whom we say he has lived l)efore his 
time, because he does not speak the language of his people. It 
is by the people that all substantial progress must be made. 
And so, my friends, it becomes not a mere question of liking, of 



250TH AyyiVEBSAEY. 33 

predilection or of preference, whether we want to support the 
free public schools of Massachusetts or America. This idea, this 
system, is the very vital principle of our government and more 
necessary, a thousand times, than your police, your militia, your 
judges, your statesmen, or even than your ministers. So I say 
you come here(and I should think all Dedham is here [laughter], 
to commemorate this mighty event of two centuries and a half 
ago. See to it that you keep up the work of the fathers. They 
laid the foundation stones strong, abiding and eternal, but they 
will expect of you that you shall take care of the superstructure 
as you raise it higher and wider and stronger, and more beauti- 
ful, — if you can make it so. So, my friends of Dedham, you 
have the word of the Commonwealth : that word, that gospel of 
the Commonwealth has always been spoken in favor of educa- 
tion. It has always been in favor of the educatii-n of the people 
because the people are the masters ; and the Governors and no 
one set of officials can usurp their place or take away their 
rights. So as those brave and intelligent men sat around, in a 
smaller room than this I fancy, in that olden time, they gave 
you this lesson: that a free Commonwealth can only rest upon 
the foundation of a free public Scho(jl. 



The Chairman, — Ladies and Gentlemen, as I 
understand from Governor Greenhalge that he and the 
Lieutenant-Governor will be obliged to leave at a much 
earlier hour than I hoped, I will, with your permission, 
change the order of the exercises a little upon this pro- 
gramme. 

Some years ago I became acquainted with a member 
of the Bar of the city of Boston, a man a great deal 
younger than myself in years at the bar. He was a 
young man to whom I became attracted, and while 
having no intimate acquaintance with him I naturally 
watched his career. He sought nothing. He made no 



34 DEDIIAM PUBLIC SCHOOLS. 

Stir for himself. Perhaps if he had chosen to do so he 
might have given his time to pleasure and frivolity. But 
he chose to do that which fell to him to do as well as he 
knew how. He chose to make himself a man among 
men, and quietly to work out his own destiny among the 
people. Above all he was a man of that stalwart strength 
of character who would wrong no man, whether he was 
born in this land or in any other, whether he was poor 
or whether he was rich. The people came to appreciate 
his worth, and they have placed him in the second high- 
est office within their gift. He has been here before ; he 
is no stranger to us. He is, by inheritance at least, a 
Norfolk County man. I welcome him upon this occa- 
sion, and take great pleasure in introducing Lieutenant- 
Governor Roger Wolcott. 



VIII. 

ADDRESS. 

His Honor Roger AVolcott, 

LlEUTEXAXT-GOVERXOU OF THE COMMOXWK ALTH. 

Mr. Chairman', Ladies and Gentlemen, Fellow Citi- 
zens OF Dedham : — These anniversaries that are now being 
held from time to time, in the cities and towns of our old 
Commonwealth, commemorating some important incident, or 
achievement, in the early history of our state, have always 
proved to me most interesting. Tiiey are not only interesting, 
however, but tliey are, in my opinion, most useful. They bring 
vividly to mind and to the realizing sense, especially of the 
young, the kind of men and women who here invaded the wild- 
erness, what they did and what they passed through, and how it 
was that those men and women founded the enlightened Com- 



250TH ANNIVERSARY. 35 

monwealth to which we are proud to owe our loj-alty and 
allegiance. I have always wished that the early history of the 
first settlers in this state, and in this countr}', could be made 
familiar to every boy and girl within its limits. I believe that 
it possesses not only a singular fascination and dramatic interest 
but that it is of the greatest value in building up, in the young 
mind especially, an admiration of the courage of Americanism, 
of all those qualities that go to make up strong and vigorous 
and enlightened citizenship. 

It would be interesting and perhaps profitable, if time per- 
mitted us, to take a somewhat hurried retrospect of the different 
methods of preserving and transmitting learning in the centur- 
ies that are passed. We need not go back to the early learning 
in the far East, the learning of Confucius and of India ; we 
need not speak of the magnificient poetry and grand theolngy 
of the psalmists and prophets of Judea, but we may stop for a 
moment and recall the way in which learning was transmitted in 
early Greece from those who had it to listening and thinking 
minds. We may pause to think of Socrates. Plato and Aristotle 
walking beneath the groves of Academe, or seated on the steps 
of some temple overlooking the Mediterranean, and there trans- 
mitting the result of their philosophic inquiries to the noble and 
eager youth who flocked to hear them. You remember that the 
method of instruction which still bears the name of the first of 
these great philosophers was that of question and reply. And I 
suppose that if that method were possible to-day there is no con- 
ceivable method so ideally perfect for transmitting knowledge, 
for breathing inspiration into and stimulating the youthful mind, 
as that of bringing it into close contact with the mind of a great 
teacher without the intervention of text book or formal disci- 
pline that are necessary in the schoolroom of to-day ; simply the 
young inquiring mind drinking deep of the draughts of knowl- 
edge that the older mind pours out and holds with generous 
hand to its lips. 

Then we remember, as the centuries passed on, how the irre- 
sistible tide of invasion swept doAvn from the North and de- 



36 DEDIIAM PUBLIC SCHOOLS. 

stroyecl the g-reat and powerful Koman Empire. Then fell upon 
Europe the shadow of the Dark Ages. How was learning kept 
alive in those times of gloom and eclipse? The Moors of Spain 
kept alive the knowledge of mathematics, and in monastic cells 
there might have been seen studious and pious scholars copying 
with infinite patience and illustrating with exquisite art the few 
manuscripts of the ancient learning that had been spared from 
the general ruin. And then dawned the new era that has been 
called the era of the revival of learning. Then arose the uni- 
versities of Germany and Italy and the great schools of learning 
that have flourished ever since at Oxford and Cambridge. But 
these universities were generally founded by monarchs or power- 
ful nobles whose aim was often the perpetuation of their own 
fame or the salvation of their own souls rather than the free dis- 
semination of knowledge. Then, too, might be found here and 
there a solitary scholar intent on widening the field of human 
knowledge, — a man like Galileo gazing into the midnight heavens 
from the heights of Bellosguardo, or pondering the slow swaying 
of the great lamp that still hangs beneath the lofty dome of the 
Cathedral at Pisa. 

Finally we come to that beautiful incident which all through 
the world is recognized as one of the most significant and 
dramatic incidents of history — that little body of men and women 
leaving the shores of their own land and coming to this country 
to found here, as they hoped, a commonwealth upon lines and 
upon foundation stones that had never been tried elsewhere in 
the history of the world. I think there is nothing more beauti- 
ful in itself, or more pathetic than the story of those nien, few in 
number, scattered, and struggling hard against cruel climate and 
savage foe, in toil, penury and hardship, resolving that the com- 
monwealth they were to found should be a commonwealth of edu- 
cation, and thus inaugurating the public school system, the es- 
tablishment of which in this town two hundred and fifty years 
ago you are celebrating to-night. That little log-cabin wliich 
served as a school-house, small, rude and uncomfortable, was 
really a more majestic temple than architect or mason can build 



250TH ANNIVEliSARY. 37 

to-day. I trust we are in no danger of confusing the idea of 
greatness with that of size or splendor. You will remember it 
is narrated that Daniel Webster, in closing the Dartmouth Col- 
lege case, brought tears to the eyes of Judge Marshall and his 
associates upon the bench, and of the entire audience of that 
court room by spealiing, with the tenderness of a son, of that 
little college in the country town. In that magnificent voice of 
his, and with that pathos which he knew so well ht)w to use, he 
said : "It is a small college, sir, but there are those who love it." 
And so there are those of us, — school boys, school girls, men and 
women, — who can say of that little school-house we remember; 
poor perhaps, small it may be and plain, and yet we treasure in 
our hearts a love for that school where we first learned the ele- 
ments of our education. 

There is one phrase I should like to have forever banished 
from our language, and I think perhaps INIr. Hill will agree with 
me, and that is the question we so often hear asked, "When does 
that boy fi.nish his education ? " "When does that girl finish her 
education?" Why, my friends, in this world, until we are laid 
beneath the sod, and I know not that our course of education 
ends even then, there is no finish to the education of man or 
woman in this modern, active, busy life of ours. You remember 
what Sir Isaac Newton, the great philosopher and scientist 
of his time, said of himself : "I know not how I may appear to 
others, but to myself I seem like a little boy playing by the sea- 
shore, diverting himself now and then by picking up a smoother 
pebble or prettier shell than ordinary while the great ocean of 
undiscovered truth lies beyond. " When in Cambridge I at- 
tended a voluntary course of lectures given by James Eussell 
Lowell, a profound scholar and courteous gentleman. I remem- 
ber when he rose to address his class, how it thrilled us all to 
hear him say "Gentlemen and Fellow Students.'"' He perhaps 
noticed that a certain movement went through the room, and he 
paused for a moment to add, "I meant, my young friends, what 
I said ; so far as any of us are students we are fellow-students. 
One may have travelled the path of learning a very little beyond 



38 DEDHAM rUBLIC SCHOOLS. 

the other, but with the tremendous vista reaching to the ends of 
the world and to all eternity, that little distance is well-nigh of 
no importance. " And so I say to you to-night, — there are some 
among us perhaps to whom this warning is a little tardy, — but to 
the sehool-childien I would especially say, give up the idea that 
your education is finished when you leave the school : it is only 
then beginning in its truest sense. 

Schools have been in existence in this town of Dedham for 
two hundred and fifty years. That long period has seen vast 
changes in their methods and in their studies. The old curric- 
ulum has been greatly enriched. Other languages beside 
English, music, drawing, modelling in clay, and science have been 
introduced, and I venture nothing in saying that sooner or later 
every school in this commonwealth will have its course in 
manual training which will be considered as an important part 
of the education of the young. And so the idea of the public 
school, as it has existed here for two hundred and fifty years, is 
destined to extend into the unknown time beyond. What shall 
it be made ? The science of education must keep step in pro- 
gress with the advance in other sciences. I look to see the 
Commonwealth of Massachusetts maintain the supremacy it has 
to-day in giving to all the youth within its borders the wisest 
and most liberal instruction in method, aim and result. 

I noticed this evening upon the programme at the bottom 
part of the seal of the Town of Dedham, the word "Content- 
ment. " I think I have read somewhere tliat the earliest settlers 
when they first established themselves here petitioned the (Jreat 
and General Court that they might be permitted to call their 
plantation Contentment. Tiiat petition was not granted, and 
the}'^ gave their infant town the name Dedham, which it has held 
for over two hundred and fifty years. No wonder tlie thought 
of contentment was very close and warm in their hearts in this 
fair valley by the shores of the Charles River, lookin-^ eastward 
to the beautiful Blue Hills of Milton, with the broad meadows 
of the Neponset abounding in game stretching toward the South. 
I think it was a beautiful and gracious i)rayer that they pre- 



250 TH AyXIVEESAEY. 39 

sented to the Great and General Court, that that word might be 
perpetuated in the name of their town. But, mv friends, content- 
ment alone is not quite enough : it is too apt to degenerate into 
listlessness, apathy, or sluggishness of mind or temper. There 
must go with, it the determination always to press forward each 
year further on in the march of enlightenment. 

That spirit of unrest which incessantly demands such change 
as shall constitute real progress is of equal importance with that 
spirit of content which, pillowed on the past, rests satisfied with 
the present. May these t^dn spirits of contentment and en- 
lightened progress continue to brood over your beautiful town, 
and so may the Dedham of the centuries that n.re to come be 
worthy of its honorable and historic past. 



IX. 

HAIL COLUMBIA. 
By Choeus axd Oechestra. 



The Chairman. — The State Board of Education was 
established by an Act of the General Court on April 
20, 1837. This Board has a general oversight of all the 
common schools in our Commonwealth. The executive 
officer of the Board is its Secretar}-, and upon his wis- 
dom, learning and experience the success and efficiency 
of their schools in no small degree depend. This office 
has been filled from the beorinningr bv men of unusual 
ability and character. The first Secretary of this Board 
was Horace Mann, a native of Norfolk County, for some 
years a citizen of Dedham, and unquestionably a man 
in the foremost rank of the educators of his day. 
Immediately after him was Barnas Sears, who resigned 



40 DEDHAM PUBLIC SCHOOLS. 

the office to become President of Brown University. 
Following him came Hon. George S. Boutwell, then an 
ex-Governor of the Commonwealth. Then came Hon. 
Joseph White and John W. Dickinson. To-day the 
Secretary is Hon. Frank A. Hill, whose recent 
appointment gave great satisfaction to all who take 
an active interest in the welfare of our public schools. 
We wish him abundant success in this highly responsible 
position. He honors this occasion by his presence. It 
affords me great pleasure to introduce to you the Hon. 
Frank A. Hill, Secretary of the State Board of Edu- 
cation. 



ADDRESS. 

Hon. Frank A. Hill, 

.Secretary of the State Board of Education-. 

Do you realize, Mr. President, the trying ordeal to which 
you are subjecting me at the end of your long and brilliant 
programme ? We have been surfeited, almost, with history, 
eloquence and song. Here, too, are three hundred boys and 
girls, — the hardest audience in the world to hold and to please, 
— and it is past their bedtime. Moreover, I am anxious to catch 
the last train for Boston ; else I must throw myself on the 
mercy of the good people of Dedham until morning. On the 
other hand, this is the first, the last, and the only two Imndred 
and fiftieth anniversary of her first [)ublic school that Dedham 
will ever celebrate, and we can afford to make a night of it. If 
you have good staying qualities, I will proceed. 

Sir William Berkeley, the courtly Governor of Virginia, in a 
letter to the King more than two hundred years ago, thanked 
God there were no printing presses and free schools within his 



250 TH A^'NIVERSABY. 41 

jurisdiction to make the people discontented and seditious. 
About the same time a minister of the gospel in Boston, Cotton 
Mather, was addressing these words to his congregation :— 

The more liberal education we bestow on our children, though 
we should pinch ourselves for it, and them, too, upon other accounts, 
the greater blessings are they likely to become, not only unto our- 
selves while we live, but also unto the Commonwealth when we shall 
be dead and gone. 

Here we have the Cavalier and the Puritan, tlie aristocrat 
and the democrat, the champion of class and the representative 
of the people. The masses might slide for all of the Cavalier. 
There was a sense, however, in the thought of the Puritan, in 
which the humblest of the masses might rank with kings. Two 
educational policies could not be wider apart in their inception 
or their results, or fraught with mightier consequences. A germ, 
a seed, in the realm of civilization, as in the plant world or the 
animal, is a wonderful thing in its potency. If blighted or 
extinguished, as most germs are, that is the end of it, of 
course ; but if it develops, one cannot, indeed, foresee the great- 
ness to which it may attain, or even that it will attain greatness 
at all. One can only look back with astonishment to the 
humble and unpromising thing from which the greatness has 
sprung. 

Now the Puritan migration to our shores between 1630 and 
1640 brought us some remarkable men, of deep convictions, out 
of joint with the ways of England and deemed dangerous there, 
— strong men, I saj", for be assured it was not dullards and 
nobodies whom they silenced there and drove to our inhospitable 
shores. The}'- came to us in large numbers, — artisans, mer- 
chants, clergymen, graduates of Cambridge University, and of 
Oxford not a few, the very bone and sinew of England, — 
ambitious, thinking, determined men, with high ideas ; and one 
of these ideas was the education of the people, in the narrow 
sense in which the idea was then conceived. This idea laid its 
grip upon the Puritan ; it sent its roots into his soul, his practice 
and his purposes ; it grew apace ; it responded to the changing 
times: it rose above itself; it has dominated New Enc^land 



42 DEDHAM PUBLIC SCHOOLS. 

tliroughout its history ; and to-<lay it is the grandest single 
interest of the Commonwealth. To quote the eloquent words 
of His Excellency the Governor, in his recent inaugural address, 
" education lays its imperial tax upon the treasury with an auto- 
cratic power readily acknowledged and obeyed by the intelli- 
gence and conscience of the people." 

There has been an evolution in education as in everything 
else. We see the earmarks of old England in the schools of the 
Colonists, and the earmarks of the Colonists are distinctly 
visible to the curious investigator in the schools of to-day. 

Take, for instance, early school architecture in New Eng- 
land, It was not original with the early settlers. Some of them 
had attended the great schools of England, — Rugby, Eton, 
Harrow, Westminster, — and they got there the ideas which they 
reproduced in rude miniature in the new world. Now what was 
the English schoolroom ? It was long, high and narrow. The 
floor rose by steps at the sides and ends from a spacious area, 
and on these were the benches, — the wooden benches, — plain, 
hard, backbreaking as any you ever sat on. The windows 
were high up and out of reach. Between them and the floor 
was the wooden wainscot where the English boys wrote, cut 
and printed their names, a species of vandalism from which tiuje 
often removed the stigma, since the name for whose writing the 
young rogue may have merited a flogging was likely to become 
a thing of secret, if not of open, pride to the school authorities 
when it became famous. Now the old New England school- 
house often repeated the English interior, only in a sn)all and 
rude way, — the same raised platforms, the same plank seats, the 
same wooden wainscot, and the same windows high above it ; 
and everything about it, too, was usually whittled and cut in 
the ruthless English way. In the little room the master's desk 
often loomed up like a pulpit. Just why so exalted a throne was 
reared in a room often not much larger than a dry goods box it 
would be hard to guess, if one did not look into an ancient 
English schoolroom and see there its undoubted prototype. And 
so in a score of things pertaining to our old schoolhouses the 
dominating; influence of the mother countrv is seen. 



250TR AXXIVERSABY. 43 

Consider, next, the teachers of our early schools. They were 
men exclusively, just as in the old country. To be sure, there 
were a few dame schools, but they were private and for little 
children. Women did not figure in the educational schemes of 
our forefathers either as pupils or as teachers. Indeed, it was 
not long ago that it was thought akin to insanity for her to 
aspire to a high institution of learning or for a high institution 
of learning to give her a chance to do so. And farther back in 
colonial times it is a matter of history that it was provocative of 
lunacy for her to write or even to read books. 

There is the distressing case of Mrs. Hopkins, wife of the 
Governor of Hartford on Connecticut. Governor Winthrop tells 
the pathetic story, in his History of New England from 1630 to 
1649, how she " was fallen into a sad infirmity — the loss of her 
reason — by giving herself to reading and writing books." Her 
husband saw his error when it was too late. " If she had attended 
to her household affairs," said the Governor, " and such things 
as belong to women, and not gone out of her way and calling 
to meddle with such things as are proper to men whose minds 
are stronger,'" — I am only quoting, — "she had not lost her wits." 

The first century of our public schools was a raw, glacial 
time, you see, — no girls among the students, no women among 
the teachers. Then came the second century, — the era of the 
Alpine flowers fringing the glacier, — in which girls were taught 
in summer schools but not in winter, and then in winter schools 
after the boys were dismissed, while women were tried here and 
there as teachers in the hope tliat they might succeed, but in the 
fear that they would not. And now we are striking into the 
second half of the third century, with girls outnumbering the 
boys in our high schools, and young women rivalling young men 
in numbers and attainments in the colleges, while as teachers 
women are everywhere in overwhelming force It may be that 
the pendulum has swung too far the other way, — that we are 
now having too much of a good thing, for w^e really need in the 
school, as in the family, the robust influence of man as well as 
the refinincT influence of woman. 



44 DEDHAM PUBLIC SCHOOLS. 

Three centuries of evolution, therefore, in respect to the 
employment of women in the schools, — the first of wontan 
ignored, the second of woman timidly and sparingly recog- 
nized, the third of woman dominant and triumphant. If in 
this overturn she can remain truly and sweetly woman, far 
removed from that devitalized type of the abnormally intellect- 
ual woman that we sometimes see pictured in society papers as 
hailing from Boston, the revolution will carry with it its own 
justification. 

Again, there has been an interesting evolution in the matter 
of discipline. Our fathers believed in the eflficacy of bodily 
punishment. To-day we look upon a child's will as a weak, 
immature thing that needs to be strengthened ; in the psy- 
chology of our fathers it was a stubborn thing that needed to 
be broken. Moreover, old-time school boys were all theoreti- 
cally depraved and some of them naturally. All this needed the 
rod, that " ordinance of God," as the Dorchester colonists used 
to call it. If it did not stop wrong and reform the wrong-doer, 
it was not applied vigorously enough. I speak of the rod as 
symbolizing innumerable instruments and methods of punish- 
ment. These methods came from England, but, in spite of their 
harshness, they had lost barbarism in the transfer. 

Think for a moment of that dreadful catalogue of capital 
offences that sullied the fame of England during the reigns of 
the three Georges. " It is a melancholy fact,'' wrote lilack- 
stone, " that among the variety of actions men are daily liable 
to commit, no less than one hundred and sixty have been 
declared by Act of Parliament to be worthy of instant death." 
In the Colony of Massachusetts Bay there were only twenty 
capital offences, and in Plymouth Colony only eight. If these 
data do not sufficiently illustrate the trend among the Colonists 
to greater moderation, let me cite the common law of England 
that allowed, and still allows, if I am not misinformed, a man to 
chastise his wife, — moderately, indeed, but still to chastise her. 
Now the Colonists forbade this mode of family discipline, and I 



250TH ANNIVEBSABY. 45 

will say in passing- that when they forbade it the American ideal 
of woman began to take shape. 

But why this allusion to punishment of crime in the Old 
World and the New? Simply because punishment in the 
schoolroom sympathized with the spirit of punishment that 
pervaded the laws and was in the very air of the times. The 
harshness of the Colonists in the schoolroom was gentleness 
itself as compared with the harshness of England. Nor is it 
necessary to cite Dotheboys Hall, with its tragedy of poor 
Smike and old Squeers, or any other Yorkshire school, to prove 
this, for the flogging block was common in the great schools of 
England, and not unknown even in her universities. It w^as 
ruthlessly used, for instance, by that famous master of the Blue 
Coat School of London, a clergyman, under whom Coleridge, 
Lamb and DeQuincy were pupils, and of whom DeQuincy said : 
" The man fairly knouted his way from bloody youth up to 
truculent old age." And when Coleridge heard of his death, 
he exclaimed, " Lucky that the cherubim who took him to 
heaven were only faces and wings, or he would infallibly have 
flogged them by the way." 

There has been a gratifying softening in this matter of dis- 
cipline in both countries since 1644, in which we have led the 
way. Moral power is found to be more effective than the rod 
after all. Frail women in Dedham, and elsewhere throughout 
the State, are ruling in a superb way, by sheer force of char- 
acter, great boys who, under the old regime, would have turned 
half their masters out of doors, or, at least, would have been 
willing to do so. 

An English writer^ who recently visited our schools in order 
to get points that might be of service at home, says : — " The 
discipline of American schools, both elementary and secondary, 
cannot be too highly approved. It is the more admirable, as it 
seems to be entirely a matter for the pupils." After contrasting 
it with the discipline of even the good schools of England, to 
the greater credit of American schools, the writer adds that 

' Bill-stall, " The Education of Girls in the United States," Maoniillan A Co. 



46 DEDHAM I'lJlLKJ SCJJ(j(tLS. 

when American teachers were questioned, as they were repeat- 
edly, "as to how this admirable result was secured, they 
attributed it first of all to the national cliaracter, and second 
to the system of trusting the pupils." 

One might go on at length in this way, tracing scores of 
educational matters in their descent from England. I have 
mentioned neither the Catechism nor the New-England Primer, 
nor have I alluded to the grander features in the great educa- 
tional trend. I have simply touched two or three things of an 
obvious kind, just enough to show that each detail in the 
schools has had a growth or retrogression of its own corre- 
sponding to changes in the life and spirit of the people, and to 
enforce the thought that, under a government like onrs, the 
schools cannot do other than reflect the people. 

In this way our school system has gradually acquired a 
distinctive, American character, as if it had never had anything 
to do with the mother country to which we can trace back so 
many of its features. Its development during the last half 
century has been peculiarly marked, largely owing to the 
wisdom and zeal of one who for some time was an honored 
citizen of Dedham, — I refer to Horace Mann, the first secretary 
of our Board of Education. 

Sometimes people inquire : "Are the schools of to-day really 
training their pupils any better than the humble schools of the 
past?" Is the Dedham High School, for instance, doing any 
better work than the rude school planted here two hundred and 
fifty years ago? How a man with any knowledge of the past 
can give other answer than an emphatic "yes" to such incpiiries, 
I cannot conceive. I know how natural a thing, and often how 
good a thing, it is to idealize the past. I know, too, how sensitive 
we are to the defects of the present. And I know, consequently, 
how easy it is to fall into the wail that the former days were 
better than our own. But if we trust our history a little more 
for right views of the past, and our philosophy a little more for 
right views of the present, we shall not fail to recognize the gain 
of the last two centuries and a half. 



2oOTH AXNITERSAEY. 47 

We may, however, readily concede this, that gain is never 
unmixed gain. We push improvement to the verge of luxury, 
but every improvement has its own vexation. High culture, as 
in the garden, brings in its train of pests, and it takes a higher 
culture to drive them out. Are some of our schoolhouses pal- 
aces? No palace ever made a scholar or ever will. Are methods 
more agreeable, teachers more considerate, studies more like 
play, and school a daily entertainment? This is the approved 
and sunny goal of the new education. But what if the pupil's 
nerve become soft and limp ? What if drudgery and weariness 
in the pupil be readily taken as signs of a vicious system rather 
than as incidents of a toil that tells ? What if the hard but 
blessed gospel of work be feebly preached, or preached not at all ? 

The spirit of the old school training and that of the new I 
sometimes liken to two methods of learning to swim. The 
learner puts on his tight-fitting bathing suit, girds himself with a 
life preserver, goes into the water with the confidence of an 
athlete, is told how to strike out, and after a while becoraes a 
happy swimmer ; or, if not, he has had a good time idling in the 
water. The Puritans would have seized him vi et armis, stripped 
him to the skin, tossed him in beyond his depth, and then cried 
out, "Swim for it or go to the bottom I" And so through 
splashing and spluttering and untold terror, the hapless youth 
would have learned how to do it or hated the water ever there- 
after. 

"Tis the school of adversity vs. the school of prosperity. If 
we shun the hard, grinding, merciless ways of the former, how 
shall we strengthen the heroic and self-reliant spirit in the 
latter ? 

O that we might have attractive books, inviting school- 
houses, grand, lovable and helpful teachers, all the highways 
of learning thick with flowers and redolent of incense, without 
running the old and terrible risk of lulling to a stupid repose 
on beds of ease the sturdier and finer forces of the human 
soul. 



48 DEDIIAM run Lie SCHOOLS. 

Again I congratulate yon, good people of Dedliani, on the 
virility of the seed planted here two liundred and fifty years 
ago, and on the great educational tree that has sprung from it 
and now flourishes in your midst. Some of its buds, doubtless, 
are blighted from time to time ; some of its fruit falls unripened 
or lives on with stunted growth ; some of its limbs need trim- 
ming, grafting or lemoval ; but it is a sturdy, prolific tree 
withal, whose branches bear, — some thirty-fold, some sixty, 
and some a hundred. 



XI. 

AMERICA. 

By the Audience and Chorus. 



The exercises, carried out in accordance with the plan, 
came to a successful end at half-past ten o'clock ; and the 
occasion will long be remembered as an important step 
in our educational progress, not only on account of the 
pleasant features of the event, but because of its close 
bearing upon the elevation and improvement of our 
school system. 

The Committee desire to thank the Historian and the 
distinguished guests for their presence and inspiring 
words ; to express their grateful appreciation of the val- 
uable assistance given by Mr. Samuel W. Cole in making 
the music so marked a success, and of the aid given by 
teachers in our schools to the same end ; to thank the 
ushers, Mr. Lusher G. Baker, Mr. John l^. Fisher, Mr. 
C. Eastman Webb, and Mr. Elmer E. Clapp, for their 
services; and to speak of the taste displayed by Mr. 
Arthur B. Cutter and Mr. Henry P. Cormerais in 
arranging the decorations. 



